The Ordeal of the Longhouse

Richter examines a wide range of primary documents to survey the responses of the peoples of the Iroquois League—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras—to the challenges of the European colonialization of North America. He demonstrates that by the early eighteenth century a series of creative adaptations in politics and diplomacy allowed the peoples of the Longhouse to preserve their cultural autonomy in a land now dominated by foreign powers.